Cordially inviting every one to the next issue of Savage Dragon, a milestone special I wrote a story in. I'm teaming again with that sensational artist, Nikos Koutsis, for an adventure in the Dragon's universe - which Erik Larsen has steadily built up since '93 in one of the longest-running creator-owned comics ever. Getting to play with some of the awesome characters he's created, like the Canadian super-team North Force, has been a real honor.
Savage Dragon #267 hits shelves on January 10. You can follow its release on Image’s site, pre-order it at Previews World, or pre-order the digital edition at ComiXology.
Also, for those keeping track, this is Operation Stoneheart, one of the projects I’ve been teasing over the past few newsletters. Call it declassified, now. I’ll have more to share before its release, but I promise readers are in store for heartwarming drama and heartwrenching thrills! Do hope you'll join us. For now, though, let me share the title and credits banner (and invite you to guess where the codename came from).
One project’s declassified, but two others remain top-secret, even as work continues strong on them...
There’s Operation Sphinx, the other comic from Nikos and me. After a couple rounds of revisions, he tied off the issue #5 thumbnails this week. Once more, he’s put such detail in already, the thumbs feel more like full pencils. Nikos keeps outdoing himself with inventive angles, clever staging and expressive “acting” for the characters, in expressions, body language, etc. I’m continually blown away by his artistry.
Then there’s Operation Sterling, my comic with Patrick McEvoy. I just signed off on some lettering by Troy Peteri, whom I’m so glad to have involved. Before he made a single balloon, we had a lengthy discussion about style – what influences to reach for, what the story’s tone was, what fonts best reflect all that, etc. I’ve been so impressed by Troy’s commitment to craft. He went so far as to get into a specific headspace, looking at lettering from a particular year, imagining what tools would be available to him then, and he adjusted his approach accordingly. Troy’s work complements Patrick’s art so well. We’ve got a real cohesive package, now.
We’ll be making the rounds with these some time soon. Basically the entire entertainment industry (from movies to publishing) tends to slide into hibernation between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. I was hoping to have both ready to share before T-Day, but if the extra time was necessary for proper polishing, so be it.
I’ll confess I’ve dragged my heels a bit on making the pitch decks, too. Outlines, loglines, synopses and proposals are my least favorite part of the writing process. Brian Bendis said it best that it’s like writing a book report on a book that’s not even done. It’s also a bit dispiriting to spend hours writing and rewriting a synopsis, just to step back and realize you’ve only gotten 300 obsessively-chosen words down.
Any time I start a pitch, I feel these itch to just script pages instead – which is basically what happened with both of these. I went ahead and wrote the first issue of Sterling, and edited five-sixths of Sphinx’s art already. Is it still procrastination if you put off working on one area of a project to work on another? My fav part of the process, of course, is working with talented collaborators. Every time one e-mails me something new – be it a batch of thumbnails, a pass on coloring or a draft of lettering – it really does make up for the less exciting parts.
I’d like to clear up something for anybody who was left curious by Clash of the Classics’ last page...
So, the hope was for this to be an anthology series. Each issue would feature a new mash-up of two classic adventure books. I was contracted to write and edit three Clashes to start with, with the next two being “Dracula’s Guest, Peter Pan” and “The Invisible Man, Sherlock Holmes.” Unfortunately, Kypsel and I disagreed about how to proceed after the first issue. There were a number of starts and stops in our discussions but, now, it really doesn’t look like any further issues will be produced.
It was my call to include that teaser. Normally, my philosophy on promoting anything is to under-promise and over-deliver, but I waived it that time because… well… I was just too damn excited about the next Clashes. I had a barrel of fun writing those scripts. The first would’ve basically been a macabre riff on Dennis on the Menace, with Pan as Dennis and Dracula as Mr. Wilson. Deranged as that sounds, I swear it made sense. The second would’ve been a more serious mediation on addiction, with Holmes apprehending the Invisible Man, only to steal his formula and find that being invisible isn’t a good state of existence for a man with a cocaine habit.
After this, I’ve gotten even more careful with talking about any projects too early. Hence the codenames above. I’ve thought about the times I’ve been on other end of this as a reader, too. How frustrating it is whenever cliffhangers go unresolved without any comment from the creators. I owed an explanation to anybody who read “Don Quixote Fights the War of the Worlds,” liked it and was wondering if more was coming.
It takes a lot of stars aligning for any project to get released, and it can be even harder to get them to re-align. Merely getting one comic together that you’re proud of and people enjoy is a feat. Quixote’s still available on Kypsel. Nikos art in it is phenomenal. The teasers in its afterward are only little teases, too. We still told a complete story. Even if we didn’t get to craft more Clashes, it remains a project I’m real proud of.
Out of all the streamers, I'm enjoying Max the most of late – largely for its deep film archive. My relationship with this app is now a touch more bittersweet…
You see, the series I created at Cartoon Network might’ve become an HBO Max Original (back when that was the app’s name). I haven't gotten too forlorn about "what might have been" because, had the series gone through, it very well might’ve suffered the same sad fate as numerous animated Max Originals which were not just canceled, but completely removed from view everywhere and declared tax write-offs. Some fates are worse than discontinued development, perhaps...
One of these days, I'll tell the full story of that show. Today, though, I'd still rather focus on the positive. Max is a much "cleaner" and more accurate name for the app than HBO Max, for one. But more importantly, it’s been fantastic for watching classic movies.
I've been pointedly cycling through decades, going from Haxan to My Man Godfrey to Black Narcissus to Bridge on the River Kwai, My Fair Lady, Enter the Dragon and Scanners. And I've gotten to enjoy a lot of these flicks completely removed of any context besides a title, logline and poster. No ads with review quotes, no intros by film historians and no commentary declaring any given title “cinema" or "exploitation,” leaving me freer to form my own opinions.
So, what’ve I been finding? Well, whether a movie feels timeless or dated has less to do with the film stock it's shot on, or the effects techniques used, as it has to do with how swift its pacing is, how often the camera moves, how layered shot compositions are, how tight the editing is, etc. That cinematic grammar codifies a lot earlier than I expected, too. I’ve seen movies from the 30s on Max which feel more like a music video than ones from the 80s, or even today.
Comparing titles in the same genre / era has been revealing, too. How and why the Adventures of Robin Hood holds up as a swashbuckler while the Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t, at all. Or how Footloose feels far less dated as a semi-musical teen movie than Pretty in Pink. There are cynical and optimistic titles in every decade, too, meaning that were no “simpler times” of moviemaking. A film’s tone or philosophy really comes down more to its director’s sensibilities than the year it was made.
There’s been some unexpected cold comfort, too, in noticing how often the tiny text identifying the parent company under the WB shield changes. Who owns Warner Brothers this decade? Is it Discovery? Time Magazine? Or America Online? 99% of the audience skips these vanity cards – and really, they should – but since my show was cancelled due to WB’s merger with AT&T, this fine print sticks out a whole lot more to me, now.
Why find comfort in this? Well, it’s a sign to me that even big developments like corporate mergers wax and wane like the seasons. Good movies and shows were cancelled in the past because of such shifts, and good movies and shows still got made despite them. Parent companies come and go, while the stories endure.
My friends Tim Seeley and Tony Fleeces have been putting out a really creative book, Local Man, and its first arc was just recently collected. It’s about a superhero, Crossjack, who moves back in with his parents in a quiet Wisconsin town after a scandal sees him fired from a world-famous team. Tim and Tony make their inspirations clear (and even clearer in their afterwards each issue), and this is just as fitting a commemoration to 30 years of Image as the Dragon’s big issue above.
Early 90s bombast melds surprisingly well with slice-of-life ennui in this one. Dark Red and Stray Dogs are two other recent series of Tim and Tony’s that you should check out, too, but Local Man’s been resonating with me even more than their books usually do. For one, it takes place in small-town Wisconsin, and I spent a lot of time cruising into towns just like Crossjack’s Farmington when I went on my epic sales tour for Andy Xenon last year. So, color me impressed by these guys’ commitment to detail. Got a special chuckle out of the grisly murder set at an in-door waterpark…
Also, Local Man strums on a number of the same themes I was reaching for in Andy Xenon. Like how humbling a low in your life feels after hitting highs you took for granted. These guys are deconstructing WildC.A.T.S. and Youngblood, of course, while I was giving that treatment to the kid hero cartoons I’ve worked on. Either source is more ripe for exploration than the umpteenth examination of a psuedo-Superman, I think.
Anyway, Tim and Tony just started Local Man‘s second arc, so this trade’s perfect to jump on-board with if you’ve been missing out on the series.
A reminder that I’ll be a guest at the Los Angeles Comic Con next week! It’s been too long since I’ve signed at a convention and I’m seriously looking forward to beng back. Thanks again to Ed Greenberg of Collector’s Paradise and D.J. Kirkbride for making this happen. I’ll be there December 1-3. DIG IT!
The Chuk Chronicles will return. If you have any writing questions, thoughts on my work, or well wishes, shoot me a message. Catch you ‘round!